University home to high-tech breakthrough

Construction is in full swing at the new Nebraska State Fairgrounds in Grand Island, leaving the old fairgrounds available for a new research park for the University of Nebraska.

As an aside, today was the deadline for submission of plans to preserve the old Industrial Arts building on the fairgrounds, a 97 year old structure of unusual trapezoidal shape that has been closed for six years and for which university officials can foresee no use.

The old building, from a time when steam was still king and airplanes were in their infancy, contrasts with the research that is going on at the university these days.

An example was the announcement that a team at UN-L's Materials Research Science Engineering Center had made a leap forward in "spintronics," a field of which those who built the old industrial arts building could have never dreamed.

Physicists Christian Binek and Peter Dowben teamed with theorist Kirill Belaschenko and collaborators to publish "Robust isothermal electric control of exchange bias at room temperature."

In short, the team is finding a way to use the "spin" of electrons -- a quantum mechanical property -- to create an advanced generation of electronic devices.

Like the jump from tubes to transistors to microchips, the new technology could revolutionize information technology through reduced power consumption, enhanced processing speed, integration density and functionality compared to today's semiconductor electronics.

An important breakthrough was the room temperature aspect of achieving control of an exotic magnetoelectric material.

It may be years before we find out whether theory can be turned into actual functioning technology, but if it does, we can take pride in the fact it was conceived right here in the Cornhusker state.

And, if the university's vision for a fruitful partnership between researchers and industry becomes a reality, it will be only the first of a many results.